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A draw in which Bath lost

Bath head coach Mike Ford admitted a draw felt like a loss for his team after they came agonisingly close to sealing a first win at Welford Road in over a decade.

Jamie Gibson's last-gasp try for Leicester Tigers levelled the scores in a dramatic clash that saw both sides cross the whitewash three times.

Owen Williams' conversion that would have snatched the win for the hosts went just wide meaning that a draw was probably the fair result.

Flyhalf George Ford pulled the strings in fine fashion for Bath having a hand in all three scores as Anthony Watson, Francois Louw and Jonathan Joseph all went over.

But Tigers are a tough team to put away and in the end the pressure eventually told as they reeled in the visitors, much to Ford's disappointment.

"Before the game if you have given me a draw we would have taken it," said Ford, whose side remain third in the table.

"But with the way the game went, especially in the first half, and in front with four minutes left at the end, this feels a bit like a loss.

"You look at the positives though, coming to Welford Road and scoring three tries, a draw feels like a loss and we are disappointed, that just shows how far we have come along this season.

"I thought Anthony was on fire, we have got good drive and a good scrum and ability to score points that way,

"But we want to score tries with the backs as well and we did that.

"It's a potent backline, we want to be able to play a number of ways and we are getting there.

"We are nowhere there yet but we are getting there, we learned a lot from Northampton and we will keep learning the detail."

For the Tigers and Richard Cockerill it was a case of what might have been as well after Miles Benjamin had scored the first try of the game.

Thereafter however it was all Bath until the closing stages when first Thomas Waldrom and then Jamie Gibson barged over to seal a share of the spoils.

"In the context of what happened in the game we would have taken the draw, we could have won it with the conversion at the end," he said.

"It was a good game, it ebbed and flowed. We made some schoolboy errors in defence and Bath took their tries well.

"But it was a contest between two good sides who both had a crack, we will take the two points and move on.

"I would never question our character and resolve, we are still playing to get back in the game at ten points down.

"It's not dead, we will get players back soon and we share the spoils, we would have liked to win it and push up to the top four but we are there or thereabouts."

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